


Copper

by carolinecrane



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Branding, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Scarification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:56:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/pseuds/carolinecrane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you play with fire, someone's bound to get burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Copper

There was a time when the thought of causing Will Stronghold pain appealed to Warren. There was a time, in fact, when that was pretty much _all_ Warren thought about. After the humiliation of their first -- and, as it turned out, last -- fight at Sky High, all Warren could think about was roasting Will until he was nothing but a red, white and blue blur on the linoleum.

But that was before Warren got to know him. After he got to know Will...well, he was still a dopey little do-gooder, and he could still be pretty annoying when he wanted, but most of the time he was okay. Besides, he was right about one thing: they made a pretty good team. Between the two of them they had three pretty awesome powers, and somewhere along the way the media and even some of their friends had started referring to them as 'the new Stronghold two'. It was supposed to be a joke, but somehow it stuck, and every time someone said it Will laughed and Warren just rolled his eyes. "I'm not a Stronghold," he always said, but he might as well have been, at least according to Will and Will's mom.

The Commander liked it even less than Warren, because he was still stuck on the idea of 'the Stronghold Three', and no matter how many times he tried to sell it, no one was buying. Not even Will, because the truth was, Will and Warren were a team now. They didn't really set out to be one; at least Warren didn't, but he wondered sometimes if Will planned this all along. It would have taken the sort of devious masterminding that Warren usually didn't think he was capable of, but Will still kept in touch with Layla, and she was capable of more masterminding than every supervillian Warren knew.

Or maybe it just happened because they were already spending all their time together, so they always got calls from the mayor at the same time. They shared an apartment, after all, shared a bed and an emergency phone and pretty much everything else, so that other kind of partners wasn't really much of a stretch. Either way, they were a team, regardless of what Warren had planned for his life before Will, and most of the time he was fine with it.

The part that was hard for him to deal with was watching his boyfriend get hurt. Sure, Will was super strong and he could fly, but even he couldn't take a bullet and just shake it off. Which was totally cheating, Will would point out later, because supervillians didn't usually _shoot_ at them. They invented all sorts of crazy weapons, like giant robots with laserbeam eyes or freeze rays or even that stupid Pacifier, which Warren still didn't really get the point of. He could watch Will take a punch, he could watch him get hit with a freeze ray and then use his own powers to unfreeze Will, he could even watch Will dodging a giant robot's metal fists in mid-air without wincing. But watching him get shot...well, it turned out that he couldn't really handle.

It sent his power into overdrive, anyway, and he melted the gun and the guy holding it before he even realized what he was doing. By the time he got to Will the vacant warehouse was littered with smoldering bodies, and he was going to hear about it from the cops, but at the time he didn't really care, because Will was lying there _bleeding_ , and Warren's superpower wasn't First Aid.

He did know a little something about heat, though, and when he finally got a look at Will's shoulder and saw how bad the bleeding really was, he pulled himself together and focused his power so he could cauterize the wound without burning Will to a crisp. It worked pretty well, actually. By the time they got Will to a hospital the bleeding had stopped, and later the doctor told him that he'd done a cleaner job than most professionals would have.

Warren might have glared a little at the compliment. After all, when it came to fire, he was _the_ professional.

Anyway, by the time they let him take Will home -- to their place, no matter how much Will's mother complained -- he was already starting to heal, and a week later all that was left of the bullet hole was a small, v-shaped scar right at the top of his shoulder.

The first time Warren touched it they were lying in bed, Will on his stomach and Warren propped up on one elbow to look at him. The sheet rode low on his waist, leaving his entire back bare, all that pale skin marred by a tiny, tender pink scar. When he reached out a finger to trace it Will hissed, and Warren pulled his hand away.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, not bothering to hide the edge in his voice. "The doctor said..."

"No," Will interrupted, reaching out to catch Warren's hand and drag it back to his shoulder. "It doesn't hurt, exactly. It's just...do that again."

Warren frowned, but he traced the scar with his fingertip anyway, feeling the heat trapped under Will's healing skin. Will shuddered under his touch and closed his eyes, teeth catching his bottom lip the way he did when Warren went down on him. And that was interesting, so Warren traced the scar again, and this time Will's breath hitched and his fingers curled around the edge of the pillow. And he'd never really figured Will for the type to get off on pain, but when Warren leaned in and pressed his mouth to the scar, he felt Will's hips grind against the mattress.

The weirdest part, Warren decided later, when they were sweaty and sated and lying together in a tangle of sheets, was that Warren had actually _caused_ the pain Will seemed to get off on. Well, technically it was the very dead bad guy with the gun, but Warren was the one who'd healed the wound by burning off the skin around it, and if he hadn't done that, Will's scar wouldn't have been weirdly raised and hot to the touch. It wouldn't have been shaped so perfectly, either. If he'd left it alone -- and Will hadn't bled to death in the abandoned warehouse -- chances were good they would have sewn the skin back together, which would have left a puckered line down the middle of Will's shoulder. Instead he had a weird little v-shaped mark with a sort of a knob at the top. Almost like the bone at the joint of a bird's wing.

That was what Warren thought of whenever he looked at it, and that's what gave him the idea in the first place.

After awhile the scar healed enough that Will couldn't really feel it anymore. Warren still traced it with his fingertip sometimes, more out of habit than anything else. But it didn't get Will off the same way it used to; mostly it just made him restless, and whenever he did it Warren found himself with a lapful of needy superhero, clamoring for something he couldn't quite get. So it wasn't a surprise when Will asked him to use his power again, to burn another mark into his skin so he could feel that intense not-quite-pain again. 

They argued about it for a long time. Will pleaded and begged and demanded and Warren told him he was crazy. There was angry sex and makeup sex, and one time Will took off and spent an entire weekend licking his wounds at his folks' house before he came home again. Then there was more fighting, mostly about what a baby Will could be when he didn't get his way, but the thing was, he always got his way.

When Warren finally gave in he asked what happened the next time, after this scar healed so much that Will couldn't feel it anymore. Will didn't have an answer for that, but he was already stretched out on his stomach, whole body trembling with the need for this thing only Warren could give him. So Warren focused his power and burned another mark into Will's skin, a small line running out from the first scar, right along the top of Will's shoulder. Like the top of the wing, he thought at the time, though he never told Will that he had an actual design in mind.

After awhile it was obvious, because Will couldn't watch him make the marks, but he could see the scars in the mirror as they healed. Thin red lines along his left shoulder, then down his back as Warren filled in each feather one by one. And every time Will would get so hard that he'd be panting by the time Warren finished, just from a little burn no bigger than Warren's thumb.

At first Warren wondered if Will would get so addicted that he wouldn't be able to get off without it, if he'd be covered in scars and still want more, until finally he wanted something Warren couldn't give. But he didn't ask for it every time; he let Warren set the pace of the design, and he never complained when Warren made him wait. Meanwhile they still fought supervillians whenever they got a call, and Will still dragged him to his parents' house for dinner once a month. They still made out in the kitchen on Sunday mornings when Will stumbled out of bed to find Warren making coffee, and Will still got off when Warren fucked him without once touching his back.

It was just this thing between them, and he liked that Will trusted him enough to let him call the shots. Will trusted Warren to know what he needed and when, and in return Warren...gave. It was weird, knowing how much Will needed him. He'd always known Will _wanted_ him, maybe even before Will did, but the need was a responsibility Warren had always figured he'd never have. He spent a long time telling himself he didn't need anybody at all, but once he let Will in there was no going back. He didn't even want to, not now that he knew what he'd be missing.

It took a long time for the left wing to really take shape. When it was half-finished Warren switched his focus to Will's right shoulder, starting at the corner the same way he accidentally started the other one. And maybe it was because Will wasn't expecting it, but the sex after Warren started on the right side was the most intense they'd had so far. It made Warren wish there were more places on Will to shift his attention, but he wasn't about to mark up Will's thighs or his chest or anywhere else, even though he knew Will wouldn't complain. It was enough that he still had the rest of Will's back, and it would be a long time before they were through.


End file.
